Geography and the Politics of Mobility
17/01/2003 - 27/04/2003
Generali Foundation
Wiedner Hauptstrasse 15
1040 Vienna
Phone (+43 1) 504 98 80
Fax (+43 1 ) 504 98 83
found.office@generali.at
http://foundation.generali.at
Bureau d’études | Frontera Sur RRVT | Makrolab | multiplicity |
Raqs Media
Collective
Image: Bangkok Skytrain, Ursula Biemann, 2001
The exhibition presents five collective and recently produced art
projects to examine the concept of “geography” in a way that goes beyond its geo-scientific definition. The increasing circulation of people, goods, and data is creating new cultural, social, and virtual landscapes that inscribe themselves materially in the terrain. Here, geography is seen
as a model of thought for concepts of boundaries, connectivity and transgression within society. The exhibition takes a critical look at an increasingly consolidated Europe as well as its borders and at the same time presents emerging formations of artistic and activist
“geographies”.
Makrolab is a temporary, autonomous art-science laboratory initiated by
the Slovenian artist Marko Peljhan. It provides changing participants
with
means to listen into data from around the world under isolated conditions. So far this nomadic research and residential unit has been stationed at
Documenta X in Kassel, in Slovenia, on Rottnest Island in Australia, and in the Scottish highlands.
The project group Frontera Sur RRVT examines the Spanish-Moroccan border as an area for mobility motivated by various causes. A complex system of forces has emerged there that raises questions of gender, ethnic filters and debates about migration and labor.
The multi-video work A/S/L (Age/Sex/Location) by Raqs Media Collective from Delhi maps the “time geography” of shifting identities
in the New
Economy. It addresses the gendered conditions of the new data outsourcing agent: the online working woman, who is the quintessential
“digital proletarian” of the 21st century.
The artist duo Bureau d’études from Paris conceives gigantic maps that
disclose an increasingly interconnected network of data-gathering
systems
involving the military, energy and biochemical sectors as well as the entertainment, information and social surveillance systems. Their pictographic installation World Monitoring Atlas transfers the “politics of space” to an abstract level.
The Milan based collective multiplicity proposes Case 01 and 02 of their ongoing Solid Sea project on the nature of the Mediterranean and the fluxes that cross it. While Europe reformulates its borders, multiplicity presents the Mediterranean as a solid space that is traversed by vessels
and individuals holding different statuses.
A publication in German and English will accompany the exhibition. It will contain a foreword by Dieter Karner, an editorial by Sabine Breitwieser, and texts by Ursula Biemann, Brian Holmes, Lisa Parks, Irit Rogoff, and the artists.
For further information please go to:
foundation.gene
rali.at/index_e.htm
Press office: Susanne Buder (+43 1) 504 98 80 ext. 24,
found.presse@generali.at
Artistic and Managing Director: Dr. Sabine Breitwieser